Organisations including the Canadian Federation of Students, EGALE Canada and Canadian AIDS Society have called upon the Health Canada, Canadian Blood Services and Héma Québec to end the ban on blood from men who have sex with men. Although other jurisdictions in the world have similar policies in place, there is growing movement from community groups and health organisations to end these policies.

Recently The American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), American Blood Centers and American Red Cross released a joint statement that read:

“…[We] believe that the current lifetime deferral for men who have had sex with other men is medically and scientifically unwarranted and recommend that deferral criteria be modified and made comparable with criteria for other groups at increased risk for sexual transmission of transfusion-transmitted infections.”

The AABB is calling for the modification of the deferral time period for men who have sex with men to 12 months in order to make it “consistent with those for other high risk sexual partners.” The Association has held this position since 1997.

By changing the policy, “The potential donor will be directed to focus on recent rather than remote risk behaviours and should have better recall for answers to the screening questions,” said Louis Katz, MD, in speaking for the AABB at an FDA consultation. The organization represents professionals and facilities responsible for virtually all of the collection and more than 80 percent of the transfusion of the North American blood supply.

Bianco called the current policy counterproductive because “the question focuses attention on events that occurred more than twenty years ago instead of events that occurred within the currently known window period of days” when the technology did not detect early HIV infection.

Global Shifts:

The donor deferral policies in some countries reflect an agreement with the American Blood Collection Agencies stance and bans on blood donations from men who have sex with men are under scrutiny in several countries, including in the United States, where a lifetime ban has been in place since 1977.

In February 2010, Sweden reduced its MSM deferral from a permanent ban to a 12-month deferral period, joining the nations of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Hungary and Japan. South Africa current differs MSM donors for 6-months.

France, Spain, Italy, Russia and Portugal have adopted blood-donor policies that measure risk against a set of behaviours, sexual and otherwise, rather than the sex of a persons sexual partner(s). According to the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT), this is also the direction that Switzerland is moving.

Instead of placing people in categories, blood service organisations in other countries are moving towards behaviour-focused screening criteria. It is not rational to broadly differentiate sexual transmission of pathogens via male-to-male sexual activity from that via heterosexual activity on scientific grounds. Neither does it seem responsible to extend this reasoning to other infectious agents. This differentiation is unfair and discriminatory, resulting in negative attitudes to blood donor eligibility criteria, blood collection facilities and, in some cases cancellation of blood drives.